Federation of North Toronto Residents' Associations
Neighbourhoods Working Together on Community Issues
Toronto, along with municipalities across Ontario, has suffered an avalanche of provincial laws, regulations, and policies affecting planning and development, all without prior consultation or engagement with the City of Toronto and its residents. As a result, residents are largely unaware both of the changes, and their impacts, and of how the City has responded to them.
We strongly support the Growing Space for Trees concept and the proposed policy direction intended to (a) protect and enhance the tree canopy while supporting Infill Housing and (b) address concerns with Iceberg Homes.
The report, dealing with Wards 9 and 11, represents the first stage in the implementation of the Avenues Policy Review to “modernize” policies and zoning to enable mid-rise buildings along Avenues. The report studies new and previously re- examined Avenues to determine where redesignation to Mixed Use Areas or Apartment Neighbourhoods with corresponding zoning is appropriate to enable mid- rise development.
On August 15, 2025, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing approved six OPAs bringing new policies for 25 MTSAs and 95 PMTSAs into force and effect. The Minister’s Decisions made modifications to the height and density of the Council-adopted OPAs, increasing permitted building heights and densities near transit. The approval of these OPAs brings Inclusionary Zoning policies into effect in certain PMTSAs.
The initiative would permit a range of businesses with patios, including cafés, restaurants, bars, retail stores, and professional offices. This would apply residential properties currently located on Major Streets, and selected corner lots on Community Streets. The by-laws allowing these uses were adopted and partially adopted on November 12, 2025.
Doug Ford says the provincial government will appeal the Ontario Superior Court’s decision to grant an injunction that blocks the removal of several bike lanes in Toronto. “But those bike lanes are coming out one way or another,” Ford said at a press conference in Mississauga Wednesday morning “We’re appealing it, because judges should not determine items like bike lanes.”
On April 17, 2025 the Ford Government quietly tabled the omnibus Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act. While the bill introduces some added authority to restrict foreign ownership/investment in government procurement of things like electricity generation and mining claims/mines, the guts of the bill include a full-on attack on vulnerable species; and a new authoritarian “override power” of all environmental and other provincial/municipal laws.
Toronto often feels shabby. There are many examples but the renovation of College Park comes to mind. The general idea was good — skating trail, landscaping, sculptural giant frogs — but the execution seems cheap and the details look rough and unthoughtful. There’s a clunky Zamboni-storing field house, expanses of lawn turned to mud and natural pedestrian routes blocked by obstacles. It should be great, like New York’s Bryant Park, but it’s shabby.
In 2023 the federal riding boundaries were redrawn, and they now no longer correspond to the provincial riding boundaries (as they formerly did).
“A redistribution of federal electoral districts (“ridings”) began in Canada following the results of the 2021 Canadian census.”
There were many changes in particular to the federal electoral district boundaries within the City of Toronto, which take effect for the 2025 Canadian federal election. You can search for your district information by a number of means.
Toronto city council has approved a plan to support the building of 20,000 new rental homes in the city.
The plan, approved Wednesday by a vote of 23 to 1, would see the city offer monetary incentives to private developers to build rental housing. The incentives include a deferral of development charges, a property tax reduction and foregone taxes and fees for affordable rental units.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow told reporters before the vote that rental housing is desperately needed in the city because of the housing crisis. She said 50 per cent of Toronto residents are renters. She said the city met with builders last week to discuss the plan.
Mayor Olivia Chow has proposed a major change to the process of how housing is built in Toronto, one that would allow a new generation of buildings to pop up on major streets across the city.
Chow is looking to implement sweeping as-of-right zoning on Toronto’s avenues that would allow for drastic changes in the city’s built form.
Toronto’s development scene has been dominated by tall towers in recent years, but Chow’s new push to change zoning regulations could result in a more Parisian style of residential density becoming the norm in town.
Rachel Chernos Lin has won the Don Valley West by-election with nearly 55 percent of the vote, beating competitor Anthony Furey by more than 20 points in what began as a wide-open race, but had in recent weeks become a battle of political polarization between the two leading candidates.
Chernos Lin, a Toronto District School Board trustee and the current chair, ended the night with 12,899 votes, followed by Furey with 7,343. Sam Robinson, son of former ward councillor Jaye Robinson, came in third with 1,271 votes.
FoNTRA recognizes the immense challenge imposed by the provincial government’s deadline for designation of listed properties, and the threat to loss of Toronto’s cultural heritage. We strongly support the City’s approach to moving forward with prioritization of listed properties, and measures to maintain an ongoing inventory going forward.
As such, we are also strongly in support of the Toronto Preservation Board’s recommendations concerning the report, namely that:
FoNTRA requeststhat consideration of the report be deferred to allow for proper communication, engagement and consultation for its proposals and recommendations.
FoNTRA supports the objectives of the Housing Action Plan, but the detailed recommendations introduce many changes and the Draft Bylaw which includes the zoning provisions, zoning maps and height maps was only made public a day and a half before the Committee meeting, with inadequate time to review. In addition, drawings to show the new proposals have not been provided.
Under cover of darkness, Infrastructure Ontario began the removal of 865 trees at Ontario Place on the evening of Wednesday, October 2, 2024. Within a single day, workers had cut down the vast majority of those trees.
The work—which includes the removal of every single tree on the western portion of the waterfront site adjacent downtown Toronto—is part of the approximately $200-million in site preparations that taxpayers are funding to prepare the land for Therme, an Austrian spa company, to develop a stadium-sized indoor waterpark on the site.
The next day, October 3, the Province released the details of its 95-year lease with Therme, which journalists and grassroots organizations have…
We congratulate Chair Dino Lombardi on his continuing leadership of the TLAB. It is important to remember that Toronto has a unique (in Ontario) distinction in having its own tribunal to decide on appeals of Committee of Adjustment decisions. Other municipalities in Ontario are dependent on more remote exigencies of the Ontario Land Tribunal!
2023 was a milestone in the life of the TLAB as it was the first full year following the Provincial elimination of third party appeals (mostly by residents and resident associations) as a result of the passage of Bill 23.
This will confirm that in principle we support (with one significant reservation), the staff report and its recommendations, including:
Planning and Housing Committee to request the Executive Director, Development Review, in consultation with the Chief Planner and Executive Director, City Planning, to continue to undertake stakeholder consultation on potential policy amendments to address ongoing legislative changes and report back to Planning and Housing Committee by the end of Q2 2025.
We appreciate that City Planning is attempting to ensure a balanced and effective public consultation regime under difficult circumstances. In that regard, the report notes the rapidly changing (and seemingly haphazard) legislative environment directly affecting development review – such as Bill 185 eliminating mandatory pre-application consultation PAC). The latter process represented an innovative approach by the City to address the revised review deadlines and punitive application fee refunds imposed by the Province.
Groups frustrated by the Ford government’s “sledgehammer” approach limiting development appeals say they’re now powerless to prevent urban sprawl, loss of farmland, and squandered green space in the province.
Among other changes, Ontario’s Bill 185, known as the “Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act” limits third-party challenges to municipal plans and zoning heard by the Ontario Land Tribunal and dismissed appeals scheduled after April 10. The new rules were introduced by the provincial government to expedite construction of 1.5 million homes by 2031.
FoNTRA supports the general intent of the Major Streets initiative as being a logical framework to pursue opportunities for increased density in Neighbourhoods. However the proposal is presented as “one size fits all”, and no effort has been made to determine if the framework works in the varied street and settlement configurations, and transportation infrastructure, and cultural landscapes across the City. The methodology is not like that of an area planning study. It is simply an overlay of a standard set of permissions on the Official Plan Map 3 that shows road width.
In Canada, after an election first ministers write mandate letters to their cabinet colleagues, laying out deliverables their departments should achieve. Some governments make them public (Trudeau, McGuinty and Wynne in Ontario), but others don’t (Harper, Ford). A newly-elected government traditionally outlines its program in its platform and speech from the throne; mandate letters may be more specific. Even if they are not made public, they can provide direction to the bureaucracy. If made public, they can be used to hold the government accountable.